π
2023-04-07 01:01
in Arduino, Electronics
I have these adorable silkie chickens, but have better things to do than to let them out every morning and close the coop at night after they get back in, so that was the first thing I had to fix. I had enough random hardware at home to open the door with a high torque RC servo:
The one downside of the ESP8266 is at least the one I have with the firmware I'm using, does not have super reliable Wifi connectivity, so my server keeps track of it being there or not, and can remotely power cycle it as needed. Not ideal, but it works...
There are predators (hawks at least), so I had to add a full net around the area:
This is the door in action after I added a switch to control it locally and wrote code on my home controller to talk it is via wifi:
The last thing I wanted to add was a water level monitor, especially because I had issues with the dispenser leaking, and ending up without water, is bad obviously. My first plan was a predictable total failure;
And obligatory cute chickens and chicks videos:
once I got the servo validated, I connected it to an ESP8266 as a wifi controller
looks wonderful, but it's not meant to stay in the water and the board, failed
oh look, lots of metal ended up in the water, of course!